Philips Fashion Week Ljubljana: Day 2

Day 2 of Philips Fashion Week is behind us and we were blown away by many new designers and already very known designers. Sadly I missed the youngsters from NTF, so I will be commenting only the evening show.

Urša Drofenik opened Day 2 of Philips Fashion Week Ljubljana. Her collection was all about evening gowns as we all expected, but with a slight surprise. She presented pieces with timeless elegance with colors of black, gold and purple. The romantic lace inspired her. Drofenik’s bread and butter is her beautiful long dresses, and this being winter, there was a lot of variety here. But she stepped out of her comfort zone and served us a batch full of young and short dresses as well, which will probably have a fresh look for her price range. The small change was a positive development. With this show we had the opportunity to see some clever tailoring done. This is Drofenik we’re talking about, of course, so in the end there was no lack of attention in the details. There were gowns galore, many of unsurpassed beauty, and some too beautiful not to bring up. I’m thinking especially of the see through dresses showing the beautiful line of woman and capturing her in a private moment.

As second Mojca Celin presented her ideas on what to wear in fall and winter. Her collection is called Ocean between us and there literally were fishes around models embodied as clothes. This is an easy breezy femme fatale that likes to stalk around the sunny cities of Spain, when winter isn’t so rough. But featuring a collection of the sunny south of Spain to Slovenia, that is quite a different story – we actually have crazy low temperatures and wearing a fish will not prevail in the streets of Ljubljana. There were warmish clothes to drool on, like the fine tailored jackets with a touch of luxurious color which added an eminently sensible antidote to whatever was happening in this collection. The idea was interesting, but a lot of the collection seemed, as the French would say “premier degré”. Meaning, perhaps, a dash too literal.

Simona Lampe’s collection this season was about crushing a kind of nuclear fusion of clothing, this collection was a whole microcosmos of fashion. Her collection is called Sherlockonogy – Neo detective science. This was my kind of style, a sense of mannish oxfords, elongated outwear and pants slightly suppressed at the waist was convincingly, timelessly elegant. Lampe’s show offered elegance, restraint, sobriety in such crisp, clearly defined terms that it could almost function as hidden clues for us to find. In the current battle between creativity and the marketeer’s idea of the brand, she is leading the charge.

Last in the series of fashion glamour was designer Irena Funduk with her collection called Shapes & Objects. Its shapes were geometric with vibrant colors and a combination of multi-layering. Loose samurai patterns form playful silhouettes that can transform a seductive coquette. Even though it’s nice to see colors being combined as whole it was oversaturated. It looked like the designer was trying hard to disguise something, but hid the point of the collection. Throwing playful tricks at the clothes, made us not appreciate nor realize just how good they are.